the dow chemical company in midland michigan the. seventy two million liters of defoliants sprayed by the u.s. military over south vietnam beginning in one nine hundred sixty one were

manufactured and sold by american chemical companies including dow monsanto and diamond shamrock. at that time the vietnam was divided into north and south the us supported the government of south vietnam and military intervention intensified after nine hundred sixty five. but the us made strong resistance from guerrilla forces who used dense jungle as their base of operations. defoliant spraying was begun in an effort to deny cover to the guerrillas by eliminating the jungle falling which. as the war escalated the spraying of deval and increased dramatically and much of the land in south vietnam was contaminated and left barren. the

defoliant known as agent orange was made from the same chemical substances as herbicides used in the us but it was twenty five times more potent. agent orange also contained dioxin the most toxic chemical ever produced. dioxin remains in the environment for many decades and causes a variety of health problems. several million vietnamese and american soldiers who fought in vietnam were affected by agent orange. their children and grandchildren continue to suffer the affects. dioxin remains in the soil of vietnam today and the land has yet to recover.

but i haven't met the tween one nine hundred sixty six and sixty eight a lot of chemical was sprayed into wrong so on mountains and along the border with lawyers and told. that they did it might get a four then the hills were covered with large trees that yeah. thank. all those. that don't want libya after the chemicals were sprayed all the trees died from truong saw into acquiring tree wow for one thing i've been going on i'm not knocking we used to have many precious animals in this area we have a little bit you know actually i don't. know why. they were elephants and tigers bears and lions i want to find out if they can make it on my back i got through i could tell they were precious birds including

peacocks. of my own. being much how i want to be they were all destroyed by the war not only by bombs but by chemicals. in vietnam agent orange was only sprayed in the south but there are many think dims in the north as well still they were exposed in the jungles of the south while fighting in the north vietnamese army after serving in the war these veterans began to develop cancer diabetes and other illnesses many of their children were born with health problems and the effects have carried over into the third generation. it's a myth that. i have six sons and

a daughter i do know my daughter has trouble with her eyes. she has six fingers if. this is the youngest son he is mentally disabled. right. one of the grandsons has problems with nerves and breathing down the other grandson has skin disease. it way what i did when i fought in the south i saw chemicals being sprayed from airplanes overhead. i became blind when i was two. since then my life has been very hard. i am now twenty eight and life is dark and

difficult. i hope that the society will take care of me and that i will be able to see again. the midwestern town of can feel how high up. no matter how their bowels are the daughter of a vietnam veteran lives in this small town with her husband aaron and two sons. if if. that. my father bill morris was in vietnam in one nine hundred sixty eight through one nine hundred sixty nine he was in long binh. and he would also go out on convoy i was born in one nine hundred seventy two. my mother actually had two miscarriages prior to me my birth experience was pretty

traumatic for her because i was born with multiple problems. and i was missing my leg and my fingers and my big toe on my right foot and my mother said that there was a gasp everyone was shocked and all she saw was the. oxygen mask or whatever to kind of knock her out my parents really truly honestly believe that what had happened was as a result of my father's exposure to agent orange in vietnam and so that's when my parents started pushing and trying to get the word out so i was interviewed for local newspapers and. i would be photographed and our story would be told in newspapers primarily once when i was a teen in the band because it was big news i mean you her girl with one leg

marching in a high school competitive band in a very small town i mean it was news i was born without my my fingers on my left hand and on my right hand. my hands really honestly never really stood in the way for me except for an outward sign to other people that i wasn't the same i use my hands a lot in my artwork i find myself drawing my hands quite a bit because to me. they're my hands you know just as if anyone would. but they do tell a story they tell a story of. doc said.

in october two thousand and ten heather and and visited vietnam for the first time . their first stop was with the family of gwen van landing in kwan maine province. i now wonder if you. were. there to come back from cleaning up harvest up a doctor who. only know. your eyes are red they are always like this even if. you know nothing i said what i said what he said mommy let. her write you know i don't know what are you. going to. die and. i don't mean that i don't. think that i do you know how to get it if you

don't like i think that i don't get what you. don't like the daughter is twenty seven and the son is twenty five. he who walked past she is in great pain when she has her period good our blood will back out that sometimes the pain is so bad she can't eat three days oh my night oh martin that her brother cannot see and needs to be fed. maybe he. can help me out to be their only outlet i entered the military in one nine hundred seventy three and was stationed and then. oh man i was . going on i was building roads to get him you know when you ask him what he thought it was the problems with children when did you first understand that there were any way out when i came home from the war and the children were born i was

shocked you get it i never imagined it was because of agent orange. that took us we thought an ancestor might have had a serious disease but. you know we checked the family histories and found nothing. goodnight i'll get that out but why don't you make up. the will play out as a mother it is painful to have children like this. but but they are so unfortunate compared to other children you talk. you would call me don't you know no one is willing to accept our children. which. they are as adults now and they would like to work we must talk the talk when you can because i think i. am going to know that no one will hire them. but.

i come to know. that it is harder once behrendt be a parent of children like the. record what. if she'd been able to have any education how far is that you know. they probably need to go you don't know them the way you never never. did. can you ask her about you like to tell the children who've been affected by agent or in america what she would like to tell them and without one of the eyes even anything that it's in the way on him and said look i'm not leaving the nightly. to the movies. i feel sympathy companies based wrong in the. movie and

i'm also trying hard to be happy. if. you like that you are you're not. ready why we are going. to question me and. i are going to. make you. feel.

culture is the same much as i can which of course he's right on it so here is a baby to give me the first direct encounter between president barack obama and republican challenger mitt romney left the incumbent looking like roadkill. sigrid lumber touring to mccurry was able to build a new its most sophisticated robot which unfortunately doesn't give a darn about anything tim's mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans and. this is why you should care only on the dog. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

it's.

heather and ran an antique store on weekends. my father was alive when i got married he really really really loved it he

was comfortable with it. i think that was a huge fear for him he was afraid that i wouldn't find anyone. and when he met aaron he knew he knew that aaron loved me he got to walk me down the aisle and. very very. good memory for me when i was born and had all these issues and he blamed himself and my mother didn't know and she was having miscarriages he dabbled in alcoholism for a while he was in prison by vietnam. and he didn't live his life because of that. what a tragedy i must've been about six or seven maybe eight years old maybe at the most and i remember hearing my parents fight and. it was typically you

know they would carry on and and then one of them would peel out the driveway in the car you know out of anger and i remember my dad got quiet and i was in my room and i heard him go into the bedroom i was little and i remember i was in my night clothes and i went to the door and i saw him standing by his upright dresser with his heels on the dresser. and i look and he had a pistol and he and. i was little i didn't know i didn't know that he was probably very close to committing suicide at that point in time and i went to him and i remember just be a little like the daddy if it doesn't work of first try try again that was my eight year old wisdom at the time and you know. you turned around and he looked at me and screwed me up. try try again

and he put the gun down father's death was really it was service connected they did connect it his exposure to agent orange he would always say i didn't realize i was taking my children or he said his just floored me if i didn't know he said if i had known what would happen to you. i would have dodged the draft and for my father to say that that was huge and to hear that come out of his mouth was shocking to me it was shocking but it just spoke to the guilt that he carried from the moment my father went into the draft our life always centered around vietnam always. of course there's been times fits and i would call in fits and

spurts in my life believe it that i would become so impassioned over power and i have to do something about this agent orange stuff and it's just still there and it's the unfair and i can't believe this one of the last times i found sharon perry on facebook believe it or not it was i had googled or something children of aging or injured children american veterans soldiers children you know and those kinds of things and asians legacy was there and i was. i cried you know i just cried and we laid there's other people because when you fight this first so long and our country is so large that you feel isolated.

when my husband died everything that i based my life on my beliefs my value system it was turned on its head he always told me from the time that i'm met him that you know we were going to get married that he he was going to die long before me and he died at fifty six it is it is my understanding that his death is attributed to exposure to agent orange because he

did serve in country in the brown water navy on the rivers. and had he had yes he had diabetes and perform the rocky other secondary illnesses. that started with agent orange legacy. after my husband passed away of course what the american people need to know that's that's who needs to know is that the families of vietnam veterans are on the brink they are there they are devastated with the circumstances though they face today that they've been living with for years with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder with illnesses and cancerous caused by agent orange their children are ill their grandchildren are ill they're in these families are devastated they're having to fight for any benefits that they get this straw in my family it killed my

husband and that's enough to keep me going to live day i die and i get discouraged yes and then i meet somebody who says you help me and that gets me to the next day. she keith's parents divorced soon after she was born. her father who she reconnected with when she was twenty six was a vietnam veteran who carry deep scars from the war he died of cancer in two thousand and nine. more or less an accident. they got married long enough so that i would not be considered illegitimate so that i would have my father's name by the time i was two i think i'd been to. four or five different doctors

about it and it to a dermatologist diagnosed me with alopecia universality in my in my case which means i don't have anybody here really anywhere also when i was almost sixteen i had not started my period yet so my mom took me to the doctor to just kind of you know see what was going on and the first doctor the we went to took a look and said i need to refer you to a specialist and she couldn't really explain what she saw or anything to us she just wanted to go over here to the specialist so he went to go see a doctor at the university of alabama in birmingham. not remembering his name just right now and he did a pelvic examination and then they did an ultrasound and some others hess i believe they even may have done a crown was on check to make sure it was really supposed to be a girl go at they found out was that i didn't have a uterus and that my vagina was only about you know that big it wasn't normal everything looked normal from the outside but on the inside nothing was right and

they said you're not going to have a normal sex life you're not going to have children and that was really hard you know in your early teens in your late teens early twenty's at college most of your peers are having sex so to not even be able to and to try to go on a date with someone and of course you date them long enough they're going to expect something to happen and nothing happens or you actually have to look at them and say i can't explain it i mean that's that's really hard. to have two such remotely small things happen to one person seems like statistically speaking there has to be a cause and maybe it's a similar cause how you know why would two such unique things happen without having some. pot you know at least possibly same cause you know i don't know if i'm

phrasing that right but how can that be how i feel about not being able to have children at this point in my life at forty i'm probably as ok with it as i can be it was i've had two different men in my life who have chosen not to have a long term relationship with me because i can't have kids and that hurts in fact the man i'm married to now at one point i told him that i would not marry him because i couldn't give him children and he was like oh you have a kid i don't even know i don't but yeah i have missed out on things i've had things taken away from me and i'm angry i've come to terms with it but it's not fair what i've found over the last year or so becoming involved with agent orange is you know there's so much stigma associated with saying i have

a problem by reproductive system i think there are fewer people that are willing to talk about it now now that i've opened up and said this is what it is. it is hard to talk about it's embarrassing i'm not precisely the role that everyone will do this and find out that i don't have a uterus but at the same time i think it's important for people to know and i don't think it's something to be ashamed of but that it has taken me probably twenty years to get around to to say i have nothing to be ashamed of. soon which brightened the moon about somebody from months to pressure me.

to start totty dot com. overcoming a barrier like this. but then you create something higher. and when you reach stuff you. go do whatever it takes to get on the top of the world. artie's. culture is that so much for the future because you wanted to feel the energy you

believe to be the first direct encounter between president block obama and republican challenger mitt romney left the incumbent looking like road kill. look. look. look. wealthy british police time to let let go .